The Cask of Amontillado Essay

An essay I wrote for English (first course)

    As many of us know, Edgar Allan Poe is a rather dark Author with all but subtle tales.

These tales contain intense levels of emotion in many forms. This tale, "The Cask of

Amontillado" is no different. As if any other story by the infamous Edgar Allan Poe, this story

contains dense amounts of irony. The kinds I'm displaying explicitly are verbal irony, dramatic

irony, and situational irony.

    Verbal irony is just a fancy literary term for sarcasm. A few times when Poe shows

sarcasm in "The Cask of Amontillado" is when the narrator constanly  insists Fortunato to return

upstairs even though he doesn't really care as quoted: "Come," I said, with decision, we will go

back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy as once

I was." as well as Montresor's final dialogue in this piece: "In pace requiescat!" with is latin for

"May he rest in peace." These statements are ironic because anyone who has read

TheCask(Casque) of Amontillado knows of Montresor's devious plans for revenge. He is simply

luring him into the catacombs with false promises of Amontillado; an expensive, rare wine.

    Dramatic irony is a simple concept, but it's difficult to elaborate. It's basically a form of

irony in which the reader is aware of what's going to occur but the characters of the story aren't.

Dramatic isn't isn't scarce in this piece. One example is toward the very beginning of the story

when Montresor excites Fortunato with talk of a recent Amontillado purchase: "But I have

received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." Another example of

dramatic irony takes place toward the end when Montresor shows fortunato a trowel of which

had been hidden until then: "a sign." "It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of

my roquelaire a trowel." Fortunato though it was a mere joke, however, the reader knows of

Fortunato's true fate.

    Situational irony is when the reader expects something to occur, but the opposite

happens. I wasn't able to locate much of it in this piece but I found two examples. One example

is Fortunato himself. Noone would expect such grotesque and dark things to happen to such a

happy, kind man with a name like "fortunato" which suggests that he's fortunate and/or lucky.

Another example is the very theme of this piece. This story takes place during a festival of much

merriment when people are enjoying themselves immensely while, underground, Fortunato is

being buried alive and possibly even more. The irony speaks for itself, does it not?

    Irony is found everywhere. Irony is especially found in any of Poe's works. Verbal,

dramatic, and situational irony can be used to further explore a stories confines. Poe was a very

different writer with a darker tune to his stories which makes irony rather easy to find in his

works. I rather enjoyed "The Cask of Amontillado" as I do any other work of Poe. It was an

interesting piece with both humorous and ironic context.

 

Author's Note

Poe Forever lol

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

I thought your essay well done. You wisely limited the piece to one theme. Hope you got an "A" if it was for a school project.

Cooper